Impact of Agricultural Mechanization on Small Holding Rural Population

摘要

India is currently at its GTPII program implementation years. In these years, the country is expected to undergo transformation of its economy. The rural India is expected to transform itself in many ways including but not limited to demography, farmpower, intensification, employment reduction, diversification of livelihoods and most importantly increased productivity. In this aspect, the contribution of appropriate agricultural mechanization cannot be relegated given the research and actual evidences from within and other developing countries. Hence, utilization of appropriate agricultural mechanization is expected to enhance the transformation of rural India and lead to a middle income country by 2025. Therefore, this review of literature was undertaken to bring to light the various opportunities of appropriate agricultural mechanization as an input for transformation. It tries to link the different effects of mechanization under a developing economy. Mechanization once implemented with great ambition and ultimate failure has resulted in unfitness to the Indian condition. In addition to land holding and other institutional issues, demography resulted in the idea and conclusion by most Indians that mechanization will not work in India at all. The great deviation in assuming the contribution of mechanization to the development process as a whole is intensified by the poor perception of people about it. Most people declare mechanization only refers to tractor and combine harvester. However, mechanization includes the different small and medium agricultural implements used in the production, processing and transporting of agricultural produces. Generally Indian experience shows that mechanization has a positive overall effect on the development of rural areas. With certain opportunity costs especially little displacement of human labor, mechanization having a response coefficient of 0.45 bears an important part of the agricultural production system. However, owing to the land conditions of Indian smallholder what is most important is selective use of mechanization technologies that could increase the technical efficiency of the smallholder through increasing the labor and land productivity. So from the review it is possible to conclude that mechanization of agriculture bears undisputed truth for improving food security, creating employment opportunities, increasing productivity, reducing loss and promoting economic gender empowerment while maintaining environmental degradation to lower levels.